est, was his legitimate meat.

With a swift sure rush and a savage snarl, he brought the little deer
from hiding. There was a short, swift chase, an agonized bleat or two,
and Black Bruin had a breakfast that well repaid him for all his
watching and waiting.

The same afternoon he saw the mother, wild-eyed and bleating, racing
wildly up and down the forest, asking, by terrified looks and actions,
"Have you seen my little dappled fawn? He is gone and there is strong
bear-scent about the tree-top where I hid him." For several days she
haunted the region and her anxiety and heedlessness of her own safety
nearly caused her to fall a victim to the wary hunter, but she finally
disappeared altogether.

It was not until the full glory of mid-summer was over the land that
Black Bruin met White Nose in a blueberry patch upon a barren hillside.
At first she would have nothing to do with him, but he followed her so
persistently that she was at last obliged to take notice.

For a long time something in earth and air had been calling to Black
Bruin,--something that he craved above all other things; but what it
was he never knew until he rubbed muzzles with White Nose and felt her
warm breath in his face. Then he knew that he had found what he wanted
and that the old loneliness would not haunt him again.

But there was one thing about him that made his mate most suspicious
and it took much patient coaxing upon Black Bruin's part to overcome
her misgivings. This was the strong leather collar that the former
dancing-bear still wore about his neck.

It was the collar into which Pedro had fastened the chain during the
latter part of the bear's captivity. This White Nose could not
understand. In all her experience she had never seen a bear wearing
such a thing as this. The man-scent about it, too, made it still more
alarming. But at last her prejudice was overcome, and the two came and
went together during the rest of the summer and the early autumn.

From her Black Bruin learned many of the secrets of the woods that had
hitherto been hidden from him. White Nose had been reared in the wild,
so all her senses were keen and the woods and waters were her
hunting-ground.

Together they caught salmon at a shallow point in the stream where all
they had to do was to sit upon a rock and knock them out on the bank as
they passed. Together, in the early autumn, they raided a beaver
colony, breaking into the houses and killing sev